France calls for EU to regulate Web giants to counter dominance
PARIS (Reuters) - France is pushing for the European Union to regulate global internet companies like Google Inc (GOOG.O), Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) and Facebook Inc (FB.O) more aggressively, to counter their growing dominance over online commerce and services.
In an interview published by Liberation newspaper on Thursday, France's minister for the digital economy, Fleur Pellerin, said Europe needed new regulatory powers to intervene much earlier,
to level the playing field in the internet economy and allow the emergence of alternatives in Europe to U.S. Web giants.
She said Europe needed to be able to act quickly, as soon as problems are identified, rather than getting tied up in lengthy and costly disputes that did nothing to help consumers.
"The current tools of competition law are totally unsuited to the fast-changing world of the Internet," Pellerin said in the interview conducted in French. "To get out of this impasse, Europe needs a regulatory authority to act on an ex-ante basis, as soon as conflicts and abuse emerge on the part of internet platforms."
